I am not normal. This, I learned from a news story 35 years ago. The details have faded with the passage of time, but the gist of it remains clear. Some expert had crunched a bunch of numbers in search of the “average” human being, the planetary norm, and found that she was an 8-year-old […]

Recently, I watched the first episode of “The Briefcase,” CBS’ new “reality” show. I found myself vaguely ashamed for doing so. I kept reminding myself that I had to watch it in order to write about it. Myself wasn’t buying it. Myself wanted a shower. It will probably not shock you to learn that your […]

For all the decades of its existence, American social conservatism has been rooted in a premise simple enough to be fully expressed in just three words: Us versus them. As in, an implicit promise to defend the former against the latter. This was its mission when it pushed for immigration quotas in the 1920s, when […]

Before he tried marijuana, he thought of trying suicide. Heavy drinking hadn’t helped. Nor had various pills prescribed by Veterans Affairs doctors. He was still angry, still depressed, still could not sleep. But he found that marijuana helped. It took the anger and depression away. It took the sleeplessness away. Most of all, it took […]

Luis Lang would like you to send him some money. He has taken to GoFundMe (gofundme.com/s78e9w), the crowd-funding website, trying to raise $30,000. Lang, who is 49 and lives in Fort Mills, S.C., is slowly losing his eyesight to diabetes. Without surgery, he’ll go blind. Those grim facts notwithstanding, some may not find Lang the […]

Some folks thought it was “inflammatory.” Some said it was “irresponsible,” others, “absurd,” still others, “disappointing.” Those are some of the words affronted conservatives used in emails last month to describe my column on the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. In it, I noted how Timothy McVeigh’s act of domestic terrorism shed light […]

A few thoughts about Toya Graham, just in time for Mother’s Day. You may not know her name, but you probably know what she did. You’ve probably seen the viral video of Graham, during last week’s unrest in Baltimore, using some rather pungent language and some open-handed smacks upside the head to pull her 16-year-old […]

On the Thursday before Baltimore burned, Mr. Lee went to Washington. He didn’t have far to go. Rev. Tony Lee is the 46-year-old pastor of Community of Hope, an AME church housed in a shopping mall in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland, just minutes from the D.C. line. Under the auspices of the National Coalition on Black […]